Philibert Baudouin, who has been a representative of the notarial profession since 1858, although for some years his attention was given to finance, was born at Repentigny, Quebec, April 27, 1836. He is a descendant in the direct line of Jean Baudouin, who was here bartering with the Indians as early as 1656, fourteen years after Montreal was founded by de Maisonneuve. In a fight with the Iroquois in 1660, when he killed one of their chieftains, Jean Baudouin was taken and led as a prisoner to the enemy’s country, whence he returned eighteen months afterward, having in the meantime learned the Iroquois language. A short time subsequent to his return he married and soon settled in the parish of Pointe-aux-Trembles, where he died peacefully. He had lost his eldest son in an ambush laid by the same astute foes in 1690. One of his sons, François, took a farm from the Seignior on L’Assomption river in 1699, near the present site of Charlemagne, and a few years afterward, in 1716, purchased the homestead on the north bank of the river St. Lawrence, in the parish and Seigniory of Repentigny, where he went to live and there spent his remaining days. This homestead remained in the family for almost two centuries, passing from father to son for four generations. François Baudouin left it to his son Pierre, who married three times and left it to his son Raymond. Raymond was drowned and his widow made a gift of it to their son Pierre. From this last Pierre Baudouin it went to Zoel Baudouin, one of his sons, whose daughter and only heir, Mrs. Edmond Robillard, of St. Paul l’Hermite, sold it to its present owner, Mr. Dechamp.
Philibert Baudouin is a son of Pierre and Marguerite (Etu) Baudouin, the latter, like her husband, belonging to one of the old families established in this province in the seventeenth century. The mother’s name was then written Estur, which has since been wrongly changed to Hetu. The family name Baudouin should be so spelled instead of Beaudoin, as so often met with at the present time. It is derived from two Saxon words, bald and win, and was latinized by the early chroniclers, becoming Balduinus, which was later translated into French as Baudouin but remained Baldwin in English. The first one who settled in Montreal very properly signed his name Jean Baudouin, as may be seen on the old records in the clerk’s office, and in France it is still written in the same way. Besides being a progressive farmer Pierre Baudouin was a church warden and a captain in the militia.